Heroes of Might and Magic V... :-O

From what I gather, Luck and Morale going ons are based on rolls. the +# either increases the chance that a roll takes place, or it increases your chance of success when a roll does happen... or both? What I would like to knnow is if the # is a multiplier or not.

5. Well the highest level I have seen so far is level 24. Once you reach the 20's leveling is a pain in the butt. I would think though that the cap is based off your maximium skill slots. Once you fill each slot maybe you cant leve anymore, or maybe you just get stat boosts after that? *shrugs* I tried very hard to drag out the game I had last night on a custom map. I was one shotting any stack on the map toward the end. Which leads me to :

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The only balance issue I've noticed is that Necros with their skeleton archers can easily become very powerful in a skilled players hands. Once you get the highest level of necromancy, have the skills that give bonuses to minimum and maximum damage, and perhaps an artifact that raises minimum damage by 1, it's not infeasibly to have a midgame hero with 2-3000 skeleton archers that deal 4-6000 damage to even large tier creatures. And they take forever to decimate, since a master necromancer with bonuses from even one castle can get close to 85% of all killed creatures back as skeletons. Better hope that player doesn't stumble over a few legions of peasants..

I witnessed first hand last night what a late game necro army is capable of. I was chasing down all throng stacks I could find of low level usnits so I can get more skellies. It was sick, when the game crashed on me (DAMN YOU STUPID GAME) I was 4+ hours into the game and I had over 4k in skelly archers. I also had an arrtifact that increased the minimum dmg by +1, so it was pretty sick killing 10 titans with a 2k stack of skellies and still having another 2k stack available to kill the archmage stack. I think part of the problem is the AI in combat. It should be attacking the skelly stacks instead of my ghosts. *miss*.... *MISS* !!! ... *misss*. *sigh*.

But gettiing to that point is only feasable in solo games. In most multiplayer games, you would encounter your enemy long before such a situation and be forced to have two good armies to cover more ground, this in conjucture with people knowing to tkae out those 1k stacks of archers first...and your reducing the imbalance.

Besides, some of the towns have their own, wow factor with certain units. So far I think that the Infernal succubuses are the nastiest thing in the game. That chain missle attack makes me flinch every time I see it happen to my units.

From what I gather, Luck and Morale going ons are based on rolls. the +# either increases the chance that a roll takes place, or it increases your chance of success when a roll does happen... or both? What I would like to knnow is if the # is a multiplier or not.

Multiplier in what sense? I doubt highly it's a multiplier for either damage or the rate at which your units act again (that would be ridiculous). As for how luck works, as long as you're on the plus side, you have a chance of doing double damage, that's all (it doesn't go higher than that). The question is how much does each + beyond 1 impact your odds of doing double damage? Theoretically, the most you should be able to attain is somewhere in the +5-7 range (from skill and items) based on what I've seen in the items listed in the gamefiles (though I may have missed a few). I can't imagine that it would merely add a single percentage chance per numeric increment. I'm trying to determine if taking the Luck skill is worth it, and without knowing how your odds are impacted, it's something of a crapshoot.

As for morale, the manual seems to hint that any bonus at all, as long as it's positive, makes the unit act again at half turn intervals. That seems crazy (though I have to admit, the turn bar would seem to support this). In the case of morale though, I can sort of see the logic, in that there are several factors (some fixed, some dynamic) that will impact it, making a sizeable range feasible. I'd just like to know if there's any kind of gradient at play, or if it's a fixed adjustment (which would seem like a crazy way to implement intitiative).

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5. Well the highest level I have seen so far is level 24. Once you reach the 20's leveling is a pain in the butt. I would think though that the cap is based off your maximium skill slots. Once you fill each slot maybe you cant leve anymore, or maybe you just get stat boosts after that? *shrugs* I tried very hard to drag out the game I had last night on a custom map. I was one shotting any stack on the map toward the end. Which leads me to :

I've hit 30 with little difficulty. There's a rather cheesy way to get levels insanely fast, though I suppose fast is somewhat of a relative term here (though it's certainly faster than doing it the normal way). Basically, just don't attack anything for many many turns. Keep building your forces, but don't attack anything for like 30 weeks. All monsters already on the map will grow to ridiculous numbers (the highest I've seen was 2500) and a single combat with them (assuming you win) will net you as much as 60k exp (or more) in a single shot. Your hero's level really doesn't matter at this point, as your armies should be in the 2k per stack area (2k Inquisitors can get up into the 25k damage per attack range), so having a level 1 hero in each fight will usually bring them up to level 18-20 in one or two fights.

I was just wondering about the game's actual max levels, in case I screw myself in a later campaign mission if I break a certain level threshold or something.

Multiplier in what sense? I doubt highly it's a multiplier for either damage or the rate at which your units act again (that would be ridiculous). As for how luck works, as long as you're on the plus side, you have a chance of doing double damage, that's all (it doesn't go higher than that). The question is how much does each + beyond 1 impact your odds of doing double damage? Theoretically, the most you should be able to attain is somewhere in the +5-7 range (from skill and items) based on what I've seen in the items listed in the gamefiles (though I may have missed a few). I can't imagine that it would merely add a single percentage chance per numeric increment. I'm trying to determine if taking the Luck skill is worth it, and without knowing how your odds are impacted, it's something of a crapshoot.

As for morale, the manual seems to hint that any bonus at all, as long as it's positive, makes the unit act again at half turn intervals. That seems crazy (though I have to admit, the turn bar would seem to support this). In the case of morale though, I can sort of see the logic, in that there are several factors (some fixed, some dynamic) that will impact it, making a sizeable range feasible. I'd just like to know if there's any kind of gradient at play, or if it's a fixed adjustment (which would seem like a crazy way to implement intitiative).

I think I didnt explain what I meant well.

If it is a multiplier:I meant that there is a multiplier in the sense that when a morale roll does happen, you are likely to succeed based off some constant percent chance times the multiplier. This is sheer stipulation so far. Say that the flat chance of a morale 'proc' is 10% and the +# is your morale.

Then:

(#)*(0.10) = total chance of morale proc.

This is just my guess on how it works. One game I had two nights ago, I had my hero go for luck and morale, and I was getting morale hits constanly. It was pretty sick. On the flip side, in last night's game I noticed the AI using mixed troops, and in one fight he had troops from 3 different towns. He constantly had *bad morale* proc. That is why Im inclined to believe in the multiplier system.

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I've hit 30 with little difficulty. There's a rather cheesy way to get levels insanely fast, though I suppose fast is somewhat of a relative term here (though it's certainly faster than doing it the normal way). Basically, just don't attack anything for many many turns. Keep building your forces, but don't attack anything for like 30 weeks. All monsters already on the map will grow to ridiculous numbers (the highest I've seen was 2500) and a single combat with them (assuming you win) will net you as much as 60k exp (or more) in a single shot. Your hero's level really doesn't matter at this point, as your armies should be in the 2k per stack area (2k Inquisitors can get up into the 25k damage per attack range), so having a level 1 hero in each fight will usually bring them up to level 18-20 in one or two fights.

tsk tsk

Not exactly a bug, but most definitely a cheese.

Although Im guilty of leveling up second and third heroes this way. I favor a main hero only, but in the case where I need a second hero to come to bat I ll just hand all my troops over to the newer one and let him take out some creeps for a couple days.

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I was just wondering about the game's actual max levels, in case I screw myself in a later campaign mission if I break a certain level threshold or something.

Jebus

Oh, well Ive only done 7 of the campaign maps so far. On those there is definitely a level limit. I reached the cap on 6 of the 7 maps. Since you hero carries over in the campaign, I think they want to keep you from getting too powerful too quickly so they cap you so you cant pull off the cheese you described above.

As far as I can guess, there is no level limit on the random maps. The custom maps may have one. I have no clue.

I wish there was a hard copy skill tree. I screwed it up twice so far.

I ran across a bug this morning. I'm up to the necromancer campaign one, tiny army with no town so I'm being careful to conserve my army. I have 3 arch-lich in my party at the time and I spot some archlichs on the map so I head over in hopes that they will join. The join window says 15 archlich at the top and says that they want to join my party. Hell yeah, welcome aboard guys! I look in my party window and... 13 archlich? WTF? Shouldn't that be 18? Reloaded but didn't matter, though it says 15 want to join me I only get 10. Not sure if this has happened previously as I never really paid much attention to when creatures join my party.

That's because the archliches were not friendly. The necro campaign hero, Markal, has a special ability called heir to undeath, which forces hostile undead to join him, but he only gets 50% + 2%/level of their total numbers.

1. I know Morale increases/decreases the rate at which stacks take their turns, but at what rate exactly? What is the difference between a +1 morale bonus and say +4?

2. Luck is also a little cryptic in the same way as morale. I know that a positive bonus gives a chance to inflict double damage (and a negative produces half damage), but again, at what rate? What are the odds with +1 as opposed to say +3?

3. Is there a list or table somewhere listing off what the various "Week of xxx" effects are? I know Fever reduces unit production, and various monster weeks spawn random new encounters, but that's about it. I'm wondering what they all are and what they do/affect.

4. How does the hero's Attack/Defense come into play during combat? I imagine it's not as simple as adding their Attack/Defense to that of any units in their army, so how exactly do these stats influence individual unit/stack stats?

5. What is the max level of heroes? Not based on the map's level cap, but the game's internals.

6. Does anyone know of a console command to remove the level cap from within game?

1. By +-50% of their initiative. +4 vs +1 is just more likely that it happens, it doesn't increase the effect.

2. Luck is, I believe, 5% per level.

3. Hover the mouse cursor over the middle of the 'End turn' wheel ( where it tells you what week it is ) and it will tell you that week's effect.

4. A/D gets added directly to stacks. When a stack attacks a target, the target's defense is subtracted from the stack's attack, and damage is either increased or decreased depending on whether the result is negative or positive. There's a buffer of, I believe, 5 points negative or 10 points positive though. ( So +9 to -4 has no effect, after that it starts going up or down ). It's easy to get a feel for - in combat it tells you the projected damage when you mouseover a target, so compare 2 or more with different defense.

5. 40

6. There's no console command to do so that I know of, however if you wish to remove the level limit during campaigns you can extract the relevant campaign file from data.pak and edit it with a text editor. The game will check for extracted versions before checking the pak, so it's very easy to mod. Keep in mind that the balancing is done around specific levels though, so you can totally break the gameplay by changing it.

Originally posted by BuckG:I witnessed first hand last night what a late game necro army is capable of. I was chasing down all throng stacks I could find of low level usnits so I can get more skellies. It was sick, when the game crashed on me (DAMN YOU STUPID GAME) I was 4+ hours into the game and I had over 4k in skelly archers. I also had an arrtifact that increased the minimum dmg by +1, so it was pretty sick killing 10 titans with a 2k stack of skellies and still having another 2k stack available to kill the archmage stack. I think part of the problem is the AI in combat. It should be attacking the skelly stacks instead of my ghosts. *miss*.... *MISS* !!! ... *misss*. *sigh*.

But gettiing to that point is only feasable in solo games. In most multiplayer games, you would encounter your enemy long before such a situation and be forced to have two good armies to cover more ground, this in conjucture with people knowing to tkae out those 1k stacks of archers first...and your reducing the imbalance.

Besides, some of the towns have their own, wow factor with certain units. So far I think that the Infernal succubuses are the nastiest thing in the game. That chain missle attack makes me flinch every time I see it happen to my units.

Still, though - if the player is attacking my skeletons, that means he's ignoring my shadow dragons, Arch liches, specters etc.Remember, skeletons are in a way "free" - you have to spend some skillpoints getting good necromancy, but the skeletons pile up in addition to whatever other creatures you purchase.Oh, and ghosts/specters can be friggin powerful if you split them into 2 or more stacks since you have a IME fairly decent change of completely missing them on attack, meaning the attacker essentially forfeits it's turn. That's pretty powerful IMO. Especially when it's a group of 15 black dragons that just completely failed to do any damage for a turn. Oh, and of course the specters still retaliate...

I've started playing with the Dungeon town, and preliminary experiences:Black Dragons are tough! They are AFAICT the unit with the highest HP in the game, of those that you can build. (240HP, I think titans on ly have 200 or so). They do massive damage, 45-70 so even a small stack of 4-5 dragons are a threat. The also move fast and have good initiative. Firebreathing like in III is nice if you can get things lined up. Overall, they don't differ much from the old black dragons.

The upgraded lizzards (called?) have an awesome ability where if another creature you control attacks an enemy, and they are adjacent to that enemy (i.e. witin attack range), they'll also attack the enemy, inflicting half damage. It's called Lizzard bite or something like that. If you have a large group of lizzards, that's a nice extra damage for EACH time you attack something adjacent to it. (AFAICT there isn't a limit to how many times they may do the lizzard strike). If you are taking down a tough enemy, the extra 3-4 attacks every turn the lizzards deal, without possibility of retaliation, is pretty significant.

The hero abilities for the Dungeon heroes don't seem that great, though. I've only played a few hours with 2 heroes up to around lvl. 20, so I haven't by any means played all abilities through, but of the ones I have none are as cool as the ones I got with the necro. Among others, the ability that automatically resurrects some of my troops permanently after battle...

The upgraded lizzards (called?) have an awesome ability where if another creature you control attacks an enemy, and they are adjacent to that enemy (i.e. witin attack range), they'll also attack the enemy, inflicting half damage. It's called Lizzard bite or something like that. If you have a large group of lizzards, that's a nice extra damage for EACH time you attack something adjacent to it. (AFAICT there isn't a limit to how many times they may do the lizzard strike). If you are taking down a tough enemy, the extra 3-4 attacks every turn the lizzards deal, without possibility of retaliation, is pretty significant.

The hero abilities for the Dungeon heroes don't seem that great, though. I've only played a few hours with 2 heroes up to around lvl. 20, so I haven't by any means played all abilities through, but of the ones I have none are as cool as the ones I got with the necro. Among others, the ability that automatically resurrects some of my troops permanently after battle...

Yeah Grim Raiders rock. Here's a couple of nasty tricks with them - early game when you have low numbers, you can split blood furies into multiple stacks and get lots of free lizard bite attacks due to their turbo charged no retaliation attacks. Also, the minotaur kings give the grim raiders a lizard bite attack with each swing of their axe, so that's double value from them. Plus, if you are attacking something that has nasty retaliation abilites, you can run the grim raiders up to them and then defend, so despite being defending they still get to lizard bite.

Dungeon specials are difficult to understand and need some practice to get right, but can be devastating if used properly.

someone has discovered a couple of cheats for the game. the console also allows you to see how the AI collects resources, i.e., to see if it is cheating its way to competitiveness.

i'm really miffed that the single-player scenario maps are basically scripted. unlike previous games, you can't customize player or AI factions. this really ruins the "sandbox" aspect of the game for me.

Is anyone else having a hard time with the campaign? Certain maps are a bit 'timed' which Im ok with, but others, like the 3rd Infernal campaign seems real tough. I have failed a few campaign maps before, but it became real obvious what I either did wrong or what trick I need to do to finish the map. This map, however is ticking me off.

You start with low resources, and there is also a cap on what buildings you can build. On top of that, the elves are already dominating the map.

From what I have seen, no matter how much of a footing you are able to get, green seems to be far better off, and eventually he comes for you with a real nasty army. The best I have done is capture the first town and then get righteously owned by the comp coming down with a nasty army to kick me rear.

Nope, I bought the 'normal' version and it is all CD's and disc 2 was skipped over during the install. I kind of arched my eyebrow at it when it happened, but I could have sworn that it eventually asked for it. I could be wrong, I wasn't paying too much attention.

NEVER!!!! All shall perish at my wake. All shall know me and fear me! I am their worst nightmare, the thing they dread at their darkest hour, I am... *coughs*

Excuse me, ever since I got this ring I have been acting a bid odd <.<

So I was fiddling with the Academy last night, and from I can tell, the creature artifacts can be reall nasty. Anyone have any good recommendations for the various troops? I had some trouble deciding whether to go for offensive, defensive or balnced stats on the artifacts.

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel this one is under-rated? Gamerankings has it in the 75% range, which I think is a bit low. But maybe it's just because I didn't play any of the previous games so my expectations are different.

has anyone got past the invasion level (in Necromancer section) in the campaign? I have to find 3 artifacts and they are supposed to give two of them to you when the cities are captured, but the game fails to do that. The first try I got none when capturing the two cities and the second time I got one of the artifacts. seems like some serious bugs in this game.

has anyone got past the invasion level (in Necromancer section) in the campaign? I have to find 3 artifacts and they are supposed to give two of them to you when the cities are captured, but the game fails to do that. The first try I got none when capturing the two cities and the second time I got one of the artifacts. seems like some serious bugs in this game.

AFAIK the artifacts aren't in the cities, they are being carried by the archmages ( who are sometimes in the cities, but sometimes they leave a garrison hero and go off and make trouble elsewhere - like sacking your home city when you are 20 turns away 8) )

I picked this game up a few days ago, and was really enjoying it up until C2M3. That mission has me feeling like I've hit a brick wall. I have literally spent my entire day today trying to beat it, and tonite I go to bed defeated.

I've read the other notes about it in this thread, and on other message boards. I've decided that for the sake of my sanity (and for my continued enjoyment of the game), I'm going to cheat like a mofo to unlock the next mission.

I'm not bad at TBS by any stretch, but six attempts and ten hours later, I'm done wasting time on it. Is there a verdict in yet? Does it seem like some things are very poorly tuned to anyone else?

That is trhe exact mission I am stuck on as well. I only tried twice. I stopped trying though, because I couldnt see a way to beat it. The first time I did that map, I was progressing fairly quickly and captured the first town and sourounding mines, when the green hero came down with a nasty stack and righteously pwned my face.

Part of the problem is that you cant get high tiered units in your inferno city, but you can in the Sylvan city. But the Sylvan city has basolutely nothing built. By the time you are half way down the building tree, you are getting kicked in the face with treants and dragons.

The second time I tried this map, I figured that I might be able to mole myself in during the first phase of the mission, thinking that the heroes did not activate till you stormed the gate. Well I was wrong, after surmassing a lot of low level units and resources (using market place) and maxing out the build tree in the starting town, I stormed the gate and made my way to the first town, but got my ass handed to me outside the gate right away.

I gave up cause I couldnt see a way to win. You are damned if you dont move fast, and you dont have strong enough forces to compete with the AI.

wtf?

A quick glance at the other boards showed to me that other people are having issues with some of the campaign as well. Some said they activated the cheats to getpast certain parts. Im guessing this is one of those.

I ended up using console commands to load up on high level upgraded creatures. I used them to destroy Gilraen and his starting city. After that I stuck them in the garison at the Inferno city and played out the scenario like normal.

Of course Gilraen popped back out of the city at the northwest before I was legitimately able to destroy it, but he only had one week's worth of troops with him at that point, and he was no longer omgwtfbbq insane.

Originally posted by hambone:i'm really miffed that the single-player scenario maps are basically scripted. unlike previous games, you can't customize player or AI factions. this really ruins the "sandbox" aspect of the game for me.

ah, today i discovered the "show multiplayer maps" button on teh single-scenario screen. on these maps you can customize a series of CPU opponents just like in all the previous HOMM games.

You just need to get a wizard to make you some Panthercorns... man, those things own everything.

Actually, I think I beat the 3rd level of the second campaign by grabbing another elf town very quickly. If you know the way around the map, you can sneak up over to the town on the left (I think) and if you're lucky, make a grab for it before the computer has time to build up an army. Then I hired an elf hero, built up large amounts of troops in both places, and went to town. I felt very limited by the amount of wood on that map, though- both the inferno town and the elf towns seem to consume tons of wood, and there's only one sawmill near the easy-to-get elf town. Be sure to grab another quickly, especially if you do go around building up the other towns.

I usually play with quick combat on, and re-do any fight in which it seems I'm taking unreasonable losses. The AI and I are good at alternate things, it seems; sometimes I can auto-fight and get away with far fewer casualties and a lot more mana left than I can do myself, and sometimes I can totally own something that stops the AI dead in it's tracks.

I beat this map but in doing so I completely lost my desire to play this game.

By the time I got strong enough Gilraen had an army with 1000s of monsters including about 100 dragons and lots of unicorns.

I discovered there is a bug in the original script. If you take a hero with a decent sized army and put him close to the upper left city, Gilraen will stay in the city waiting for an attack. You can then take use the other two elf cities and the one devil city to produce troops every week until you have enough strength to beat Gilraen (who will also strengthen his army each week).

Ugh. I finally got this game, and it runs like ass on my computer. Even at 1024x768 and low detail I get tons of stuttering and choppiness when it needs to load something. My CPU and RAM meters stay pegged at 100% pretty much constantly. Looks like I finally have a reason to upgrade my xp1800 / 512 / 9800 Pro; too bad I don't have the money.

Are there any performance tweaks out there? I could really use a few.

Aside from that, I really like this game. The initiative system works really well, and it adds a new layer to the strategy. Being able to keep troops in reserve is another minor thing which has the potential of being nice. If I don't need my archers for a battle it's nice to keep them off the field so they don't get targeted by the damn AI.

The skill trees are huge - I need to really sit down and figure out what's good and what's not. My main hero in the first campaign is not bad so far, but I'm sure she has some worthless skills because I didn't know how bad they were at the time.

The factions are very different from each other. I like this - it seems like every unit beyond the first-levels has some sort of unique ability. It's just a nasty surprise going up against a new creature and having them hit you with some weird vicious attack.

I've been playing this a lot. Skills are pretty important... Leadership is good for morale, Logistics for movement. I avoid all the spell circles, except maybe light magic which can get you ressurection. The "Master of" options aren't very helpful.

There are two magic-related skills which I can't remember the name of but they go well together... one lets you get exp/stats faster and leads to learning lvl3 spells from every circle, the other leads to regen mana at double rate which is great.

For undead, don't pick leadership because undead morale is always 0, and you don't need light magic because you get raise dead.

Summoning is pretty good for phantom warriors, the higher you are in that the higher level troops you can phantom warrior. But you only need that lvl 3 ability, for copying missile units.